Miyazaki Marathon Day 6: Whisper of the Heart

Name: Whisper of the Heart
Type: Movie
Rating: Any Age
Runtime: 111 min
Directed By Kondo Yoshifumi/Miyazaki Hayao
Produced By Studio Ghibli
Year Produced: 1995

The To Aru Kagaku no Home Theater Miyazaki Marathon... and then some... continues, despite public protest!

This is a "festival" where I sit down at spend about a week and a half watching all of the Miyazaki movies that I want to.  I didn't mention this last time, but I don't have any particular interest in Ponyo.

What's still to come are:

Sunday - Princess Mononoke (1997)
Monday of Next Week - Spirited Away (2001)
Tuesday of Next Week - Howl's Moving Castle (2004)


I've already reviewed Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa, Laputa: Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Porco Rosso, so if you're interested in that, then check it out... back there.


Shizuku is a typical Japanese high school girl.  She gets decent grades and has a close circle of friends.  Granted, she probably devotes a little too much time to a specific extracurricular activity than she should, but that's a teenage girl for you.
... It's reading!  Jeez, your minds are in the gutter.  It's a Ghibli movie, dammit!

That's always a bad sign.

Her friends are all members of some kind of choir/band or something.  For some unexplained and uncared reason, they're doing Country Road by that dude John Denver.  Only one problem though... it's in English.

So they've enlisted Shizuku to write them a Japanese version...

 Yes, an armature song writer myself, I'd say you've got talent.

... but that's a side note.

The main story here is what Shizuku finds written on the library cards of some of the books that she's brought home.

... that reads as Amasawa Seiji, by the way, in case you were like me and had to read the subtitles.

So who is this "Amasawa Seiji"?  What does he look like?  What are his interests, his favorite foods, his hair color?  And most importantly, why is he reading all of these books too?

These are just a couple of deluded questions that I'm sure were rocketing through Shizuk's head when she saw this, though she voiced only a couple.

The next day, she and her friend Yuko at their school.  This is another concept that I suppose only people who care about their school success could understand... why are the school gates open on a... not school day (I don't know the actual date)?

Either way, she goes into the school library and finds a book that she's been looking around for... and guess what's on the inside of the cover?

... Donated.

Kind of anti-climactic of me, yeah?

... FOOLED (NOT!)!

The book was donated by none other than her knight in paper armor Amasawa... Seiji.

She goes outside and meets her friend Yuko, giving her the lyrics that she's come up, and Concrete Road, possibly the best song ever written in Japanese.

... But little does Shizuku know that their get-together was not just about the song, but also about (what else) love (kissy kissy).

... No, not with each other, that'd just be a little too over the top for Ghibli.  Actually, Yuko has a secret crush that's only secret from the guy that she likes eventually.  To make things worse, she's been asked out by another guy (oh, the drama!)

They're both baseball jocks, but the guy that Yuko's into is named Sugimura (who's in their class), a fact that Shizuku discovers when Yuko nearly has a heart attack when Sugimura starts talking to Shizuku.  No, I don't know why this would freak her out so bad either, but there you go.

Yuko dashes off, and Shizuku follows her, dropping her new book and the sheet music as she does.

After a "Duh" conversation, Shizuku finally realizes what's happened to her stuff and dashes back to the school, only to find some creepy other high school reading the book.

... okay, he's not that bad actually.  He's good enough to make wisecracks, and gave the book back without arguing or anything.

But then he went and said this.

WHAT, FUCKER?!

Pissed off for obvious latent-attraction reasons, Shizuku goes home and... reads some more.  She also fantasizes about Mr. Amasawa some more too.

On a semi-unrelated note, Shizuku's sister who's come home after an extended leave has returned home for another unknown reason.

After a while, Shizuku's sister has her deliver their father's lunch to him at the library (he works there).  So she sets off grudgingly, since almost nobody gets along with their siblings...

On the way there, she meets... a cat.

Now, I don't know where the fascination with this obviously strange cat comes from, and I don't understand why the cat didn't just scratch her face off like my old cat did to my friends (it was actually kind of funny).

Either way, at Shizuk's stop, the cat also ditches and Shizuku goes running after him, only to lose him at a crosswalk.

As she continues her walk to the library, she finds the cat again, and after violating several trespassing laws, manages to follow it into a boutique of antique collectibles and crap... and a clock with this on it...

Can you read that?  It says Porco Rosso... does anyone get this?  Is Porco the Dwarf?

While there, she also meets...

Zie Barron von Vaderham.

... just the Baron.  I don't know who in their right mind would give such a title to a porcelain cat, but then again, I don't know why anime girls go into such a panic when the guy they like starts talking to someone they are talking too.  Keep your cool, girls (although it's kind of cute.  Unrealistic, and people looking for that are probably never going to get a girlfriend, but cute nonetheless).

After having a nice talk with the proprietor, Shizuku realizes that she's close to being late to delivering her father's lunch, so she dashes out of the store, inquiring if she can return again later.

Shizuku runs all the way down the stairs, a feat that is beyond many professional athletes, and arrives at the steps before the library... only to discover that she's dropped the lunch somewhere.

Just then, that guy who was reading her book back at school shows up, delivering her lunch to her before making another comment and riding off... singing Concrete Roads... good.  He's been converted... or assimilated.

... and I'll just leave the rest to the spoiler section.

Okay, so you're probably wondering what's with the / in the director section.

Miyazaki Hayao didn't actually direct most of this movie.  It was still written and produced by him and stuff, but actually that other guy; Kondo Yoshifumi directed pretty much everything.

It's a-freaking-live!!

Miyazaki directed the "fantasy" sequences of the movie, short though they may be, you could probably be see a little more of his style in there.  Elements from Kiki, Porco, and even Nausicaa, not to mention an almost trademark freeness of camera and angles, though it's a lot easier to do when you've got people flying.

Like I've said before, the music was epic.  Country Road in Japanese, not to mention Concrete Road, it just couldn't get much better.  Throw in a My Love is a Stapler, a Fuwa Fuwa Time, and you've got the best anime score on Earth!

Yet again, go with the Japanese.  There wasn't anybody outstanding in the English cast this time, but then again, it was a little-known movie.  I didn't know about it until I researched Miyazaki to do this.

This was a pretty good show, especially if you like semi-depressing plot lines.

Ghibli 13 Movie Collection (Dual Audio) Nihonomaru

Coming up next!

Day 7: Princess Mononoke!

Alert!

If you don't like spoilers, or still want to watch the show now, you'd better stop reading!

If you couldn't guess that the guy reading the book at the beginning/the guy who delivered the lunch/the guy who used to hate Concrete Road was Seiji, go away right now.  I'm serious.  I won't say predictable, but I will say that I could see it coming a mile off.

It all boils down to this;

Over the course of a set of tests, Shizuku kept going back to the old man's store to see the Baron again, but it was always closed.

Sugimura's asked by one of his friends to get a reply from Yuko, which throws her all out of whack, and then she yells at him (I probably wouldn't have gotten it either at first).  Sugimura goes at asks Shizuku what's going on, and she tells him that Yuko likes him.

Too bad Sugimura's already in love with Shizuku.  Kind of saw this one too.  She says that they can only be friends.

Later on, Shizuku returns yet again to the store, finding her old cat friend there.  She talks to him for a while, but the cat decides that he's not exactly interested in the whining of some teenage girl.

Seiji shows up (although you don't know that he's Seiji yet), and invites her into the shop, since it's his grandfather's.  Shizuku checks out the Baron again for a while, watching it's eyes though a sunset, then heads downstairs and sees Seiji making a violin.

She eventually asks him to play, and he agrees so long as she sings.  Well in the middle of the song, gramps comes back and it turns into a jam session (with more classical instruments).

No, I don't know what the fuck that one on the right is, but it's got an almost impossible number of strings.

After all that, she finally figures out that he's Seiji, but gets over it pretty quickly.

As he's walking her home, he says this.

A good goal.  I've always kind of wanted to learn how to play a violin or a piano (and now I want one of those guitar things (it might actually be a multi-string guitar, but the shape looks wrong)), but I'm too poor right now.  I've got a Kamaka ukulele (because I used to play that exclusively until I figured out "Hey, we need a guitar in here somewhere!"), and an acoustic guitar, and am saving up for an electric and all the shit you need for that.

The next day, Seiji shows up at Shizuku's classroom and tells her that...

He's just going for two month internship to see if he's got talent, and if he doesn't, he's back in high school.  But if he does, then he's gone for ten years.  TEN YEARS.  What a romance.  Talk about not just long-distance, but long-... wait I suppose.

They talk on the roof for a while longer (is the roof always open to suicidal teens in Japan?), during which Seiji finally reveals his master plan.

When Shizuku finally figures out that she seems to be the only one without a plan for her future, she gets depressed and goes over to Yuko's house to talk with her.  While there, she gets inspired and makes her own decision.

She goes and asks Seiji's grandfather if she can use the Baron as the main character for her story, and he agree to it so long as he can be the first person to read her finished work.  With no other choice, she gives in.

And so she goes full throttle on that.  She more or less discounts studying for her high school exams and just write and writes.  This worries her parents, but after a short talk, they decide to let her do what she wants, but accept the responsibility for her actions (it's not a great as it sounds).

Shizuku finally manages to finish the story, and takes it to the old man, begging him to read it.

His final conclusion is that it is a "rough" work, lacking discipline and conclusion, but I think that it's pretty epic that she finished an entire a book (no matter how incomplete) in two months.  Most writers can't finish like, a chapter in that time.

They have some ramen to celebrate the end of her trial, and the old man tells Shizuku the story of the Baron; another love story.  The Baron was part of a couple, and the original owner was reluctant to sell him without his mate who was being cleaned or something.  That was it until the old man's "lady friend" suggested that they each take one, and then reunite them when the old man (then a young man) could return.  The owner caved and sold the Baron to the old man.

The only thing stopping this from being a happy story is that WWII broke out after that, and what with him being in Japan and her being in Germany... let's just say it was difficult to meet again.

The old man returned to Germany after the war, but couldn't find either of them ever again.

The next day, Shizuku woke up to see this.

After catching an earlier flight, Seiji's come to pick her up to go to his secret place and watch the sun rise over the city.  Things worked out for him over in Italy, and now he's going there for another ten years.

After saying that, he drops this bombshell.

 

 They're in middle school, right?

Slightly inappropriate, but he's in love... and he's fourteen!  But so is she, so she says yes.  No matter how stupid, it still gave you that warm and fuzzy feeling.  Since I'm like that, I kind of imagined that she somehow moved to Italy after she graduated, but Miyazaki left it open ended again, and again, I don't know whether to be happy or pissed.  Oh well.

From what I can gather, this is based on a manga, but I haven't found it.  I also haven't actually looked.

The movie was good enough for me.